Preliminary results from Tuesday’s special election appear to show voters’ continued support in funding the regional automated fingerprint identification system, known as AFIS , with the eighth property tax levy in nearly 40 years headed toward renewal.

More ballots will be tallied in the coming days.

AFIS, a regional database containing finger and palm prints of nearly 1 million people, is used to match unknown prints left behind at crime scenes to known prints. People who are arrested and booked into jail have contributed the bulk of prints stored in AFIS computers. But the system is also used to store prints of people who undergo background checks — both civilians and prospective officers — before working for law enforcement agencies; registered sex offenders; people with concealed pistol licenses; and people who need special licenses, including taxi drivers and adult entertainers.

More than 200 mobile devices distributed to law enforcement agencies throughout the county are also used in the field to allow police officers and sheriff’s deputies to quickly identify people, including those who give fake names to dodge arrest warrants or hide criminal history.

The mobile devices and machines that scan all 10 fingers and both palms also serve a community-care function, helping the medical examiner’s office identify nearly 700 people who died last year and another 82 people who were hospitalized and unable to identify themselves.

King County is the only county in the state with its own AFIS computer and a shared regional model that provides identification and forensic services to all local law enforcement agencies, according to the ordinance approving the ballot measure passed by the Metropolitan King County Council in January.

“By centralizing services, technology and resources, the regional approach supports crime-solving at a lower overall cost, through economy of scale,” the ordinance reads. “Other benefits of a regional approach include a larger, higher quality database that results in more identifications, and more information sharing between agencies.”

Prints entered into AFIS are sent along and added to progressively larger print identification systems, starting with the Washington State Patrol, then the Western Identification Network, a consortium of law enforcement agencies in nine states including Washington, and finally, the FBI.

If the measure failed to pass, the responsibility to collect fingerprints for criminal identification would revert to each city’s police department and the sheriff’s office for unincorporated areas of King County, as required by state law. Staff and technology would be reduced or eliminated, and cities would need to fund and staff their own services, contract with an outside agency or rely on the State Patrol’s identification services, the latter of which would likely result in a slowdown in criminal and forensic investigations.

King County voters first approved a property tax levy to create the AFIS program in November 1986 and the first AFIS computer was installed in 1988. The system was updated 11 years later, then replaced with a new system in 2011, which was upgraded to a cloud-based system in 2018, the same year voters approved the last levy that generated $125 million from property taxes from 2019 to 2024.

Levy money was used to build an $11.5 million, 18,000-square-foot lab, photo studio and garage housed in a Renton business park that opened in 2020 and to fund a $2.6 million office remodel on the floor above the lab, where most of the program’s examiners have worked since 2021.

The AFIS program is staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with examiners who visually match and verify fingerprints taken from crime scenes to known fingerprints in the system. The program also offers the services of a seven-member AFIS mobile response team, which was called to 3,000 crime scenes in 2023 to search for and lift usable prints.

Though the previous levy expired at the end of last year, a surplus of about $40 million was used to fund the AFIS program through 2025, according to AFIS Regional Manager Mike Leahy.

Planned expenditures for this year total $29.5 million, leaving an undesignated fund balance of $10.5 million going into 2026. Next year’s planned expenditures total nearly $25 million, “so we would need the levy renewal to continue operations,” Leahy said.

The 2018 AFIS levy was adopted at a rate of $0.035 per $1,000 of assessed value. If passed, the new levy will fund the program beginning next year through 2032.

During the first year, property owners would pay $0.0275 per $1,000 of assessed value, with annual increases limited by statute and exemptions for eligible seniors, veterans and people with disabilities. A home assessed at $885,000 in 2026, for example, would have a maximum levy amount of $24.34.

Material from The Seattle Times archive is included in this story.